Skill gap causing major headaches for employers:  According to a CareerBuilder study, 2 in 3 employers (67%) say they are concerned about the growing skills gap.  More than half (55%) say they have seen a negative impact on their business due to extended job vacancies with a sizable proportion of these employers pointing to productivity issues, an increase in voluntary turnover, and revenue loss. Nearly 60% of U.S. employers have job openings that stay vacant for 12 weeks or longer. The average cost HR managers say they incur for having extended job vacancies is more than $800,000 annually.   According to the survey, 68% of employers who said they were increasing their number of full-time, permanent employees in the first quarter (Jan.1-March 31, 2017) currently have open positions for which they cannot find qualified candidates. This is consistent across company sizes with larger companies—which tend to have more job openings in general.  1 in 5 workers (20%) say their professional skills are not up to date. 57% of workers reported that they want to learn a new skillset to land a better-paying, more fulfilling job, but half of them said they can't afford to do so.  Source:  CareerBuilder 4/13/17

Foreign worker hiring stays stable – at least for now:  According to a new CareerBuilder survey, a third of employers (33%) say they plan to hire immigrant workers in 2017, with 16% planning to do so in the second quarter. While 35% of workers voiced concern about immigrants taking U.S. jobs in general, the vast majority of workers (90%) don't have any concerns about immigrant workers taking their own jobs.  There has been much discourse around how much immigrants earn compared to other workers, but from the employer's perspective, they don't see much of a difference, if at all. Of employers who hire immigrant workers, the vast majority (80%) say that they pay the same to both U.S. born workers and immigrants working in the same roles. 12% of these employers reported that they pay immigrants less while 9% reported that they pay immigrants more. Larger employers will more likely hire more foreign workers.  To hear more about the Trump Administration plans for employment based visas, attend the ASE Selected Insight, Cross Border and Immigration Update, on May3rd. For more information, click here.  Source: Wolters Kluwer 4/20/17

Smaller employers disadvantaged in the war for talent – less are offering healthcare benefits:  EBRI analyzed the percentage of employers offering health insurance from 2008–2015 to better understand how health insurance offer rates have been affected by the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), the Great Recession of 2007–2009, and the subsequent economic recovery.  Offer rates for smaller employers have been steadily falling since 2009: (a) for employers with fewer than 10 employees, from 35.6% in 2008 to 22.7% in 2015 (a 36% decrease), (b) for employers with 10– 24 employees, from 66.1% in 2008 to 48.9% in 2015 (a 26% decline), and (c) for employers with 25–99 employees, from 81.3% in 2008 to 73.5% in 2015 (a 10% decline). But among larger employers, offer rates have been steady over the same period: (a) for employers with 1,000 or more employees, around 99%, and (b) for employers with 100–999 employees, in the 92.5% to 95.1% range. Healthcare is an important benefit for many potential employees and the lack of healthcare often puts smaller employers at a disadvantage for attracting and retaining talented staff. Source: EBRI

E-Security at work is important to employees, yet employees cause data leaks:  kCura commissioned a survey conducted by Harris Poll among 1,013 US adults age 18 and older who were employed full-time or part-time and found that 98% of respondents believe that security is important to them, but 60% have used their personal device in some way while connected to their company’s WiFi. 38% use work email at least sometimes to send or receive personal/non-work related communications, while 28% percent sometimes or often use a work device to chat online with friends using services like Skype, Google Hangouts, or Facebook Messenger.  The survey results also revealed that 63% of employees don't believe their companies have policies on email retention or checking personal email and other accounts at work, or if they do, they don't know about them. A slightly better 56% say the same about written social media policies. An overwhelming majority of employees (70%) also admit to using email/folders in their inbox as filing systems on the job – a habit that makes it more difficult for enterprises to implement email retention policies without disrupting business.  Source: The relativityblog.com 4/12/17

Even doctors can be impacted by wage disparity:  According to Medscape LLC’s annual Physician Compensation Report surveying 19,000 physicians nationwide, the wage gap among specialist physicians is at 37%, up 4% from last year, with women earning an average $251,000 a year to a man’s $345,000.  Black women doctors suffer more than white women, making 69¢ for every dollar a white male doctor earns. The survey covers 27 specialty areas. One of the reasons for the gender discrepancy, the report found, is that fewer women become specialists than men. This trend is changing, however, as young female doctors increasingly enter these higher-paying fields of medicine. Women make up 18% of orthopedists under 35, but only 9% of the specialty overall are women. Orthopedists are the highest-paid specialists, with average earnings of $489,000 annually. Urology, the fourth-highest-paid specialty at an average of $400,000 a year, shows a similar trend. 16% of urologists under 35 are women, compared with 10% across the field. “There are tons of factors here,” said Leslie Kane, senior director of Medscape Business of Medicine. “Women are more likely to work part time than men,” she said, “and older male doctors tend to be self-employed, meaning they run their own practice.”  Source: Bloomberg 4/5/17